My Escatological Vision

[dqualk]

No one here hates god, he is a fictional character remember.

One might as well hate the easter bunny or Batman.

What we do hate are the men who use the authority of god to justify their lust to control and dominate others.

Who get people to kill and die in the name of a false belief and yet garner to themselves wealth and luxury whilst exhorting others to poverty and chastity.

The ones who would have you believe that just being alive is a sin and that you need to beg for forgiveness from the very entity who made you that way in the first place.

The ones who claim to have a direct line to god and use that to perpetuate their own hate, bigotry and intolerance.

In short, we hate the hypocritical bastards who call themselves "men of god"

As to god, well there might be an intelligent first cause to the universe, at the moment we can neither comfirm or deny.

But it won't be the petty, insecure, murderous nutjob portrayed in the bible.

That is kind of hateful... hating men of God. Well I do not hate you, any case! Also, the Bishops of the Catholic Church, at least for the past 300+ years have lived without any kind of luxury, for the most part, many of which take vows to povery and celibacy, like our dear Pope, who does not have an personal items, besides a few keep sakes, like a watch his sister gave him. Further, Religious (monks and nuns) make true vows to poverty and never own anything, and hardly eat anything. Many never eat meat or drink alcohol. And they work, and all of their work goes to others. Many men of God our heroes, even if you think they are delusional, and if you can't see that I would say you are blinded by hate.

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I am curious, is there anyone who thinks that if God were real they would eternally hate him, even if it were painful? Also, you Theist's/agnostics what do you think heaven and hell is and why? And finally, you atheists, what do you think about this approach to heaven and hell? Do you hate it, is it nice but obviously false because God isn't real, or something else?

I don't know how I'd feel if God were real, but it wouldn't really be up to me. Feelings are not a matter of choice. As for whether I like this approach to heaven and hell, I'm generally indifferent to obvious fantasies, but as obvious fantasies go, I suppose it's better than fire and brimstone.

Thank you for your honest and charitable answer. In truth I call those my brothers who truly seek the Truth. As I believe the Truth is God, and Jesus tells us that those seek shall find, those who knock the door shall be opened to them, and those who ask will receive. This obviously extends to anyone of any relgion, if they seek the Truth and are charitable then I count them as my brothers and sisters, because I have faith that God's love has made a way for them, I just can't see it.

Therefore I do not worry myself with whether or not people are going to hell unless they are religious (atheist or Theist). (BTW I'm using religion in its negative connotation, as religious can also have a positive meaning) Anyway, here is the story I intended to include in my initial post but forgot but would be most useful at this point:

The Prodigal Son to me is an analogy of heaven and hell. Here's how it goes in my own style, there were two brothers who worked for their loving father. The older one is a hard worker and the younger one was rather wild. When the younger one turned 21 he asked for his share of his father's inheritance. This is most disrespectful for a few reasons, 1) Younger sons do not get inheritance at all except out of the kindness of the master, within this culture, and 2) It’s a sign of disrespect and abandonment to leave your family because in these days it was literally impossible to survive on your own. You needed a family to take care of you when you were sick, as there was no health care; you needed a family to help you pull fruit from the hard ground etc. So it was an ass whole thing to do. But his father knew that he could not convince his son otherwise so he gave him the inheritance.

The younger son went straight way to spend it on boos and babes (obviously ha-ha) after wasting all of his money he was too full of shame to go back to his father so he sought work elsewhere. No one was hiring. He had to travel a long ways and he was finally able to work for a heather pig farmer. It was most disturbing for this man to work for a pig farmer as pigs were unclean and any handling of pigs was a way of abandoning the God of your fathers. But he needed the money and so he abandoned his religion. At this point he has abandoned his family and his religion. He's basically at the bottom of the barrel.

After many long days of very hard and nasty work he decides that working for his father as a servant is far better than working for this man. So he decides to go back and beg for forgiveness and ask that he be able to be a lowly servant in his father's house.

On his way home his father spots him from afar and immediately races after him. He meets him in the field and embraces him and says my son who was dead has come back to life. The prodigal son immediately begins apologizing and asks if he can be a lowly servant, and requests nothing more. His father refuses him and instead puts a ring on his finger (the symbol of inheritance effectively meaning that he has a new inheritance) and sandals on his feel (meaning that the was a free man, as in this society servants did not wear shoes to differentiate them from others).

After this the father calls for his older son and asks him to get the fattened calf as they are going to celebrate the return of his brother. The older brother is infuriated at his father. He says all these years I've worked diligently for you, never asking for anything and doing everything you say. You never once threw me a party or gushed with joy over me like this. The father replies, my son you know that I love you, anything I have is yours and you know it. But his son is so angry that his father has shown mercy on his brother who didn’t deserve it that he refused to enter the party. Instead he remained outside of his own volition.

In the story the father is analogous to God, the older son is analogous to a religious man and the younger son is analogous to us all. The party is analogous to heaven, and being outside the party is analogous to hell (or perhaps purgatory). God is always ready and willing to forgive us, eternally. He loves us eternally. The only people who suffer are those who hate God for his mercy on those who the religion believe do not deserve mercy, or perhaps because the religious people believe that the gift of free will was not worth the suffering endured by many.

So pleasure seekers are typically safe because they live wild until they are hit with some tragedy then they immidiately turn to God. lol I'm sure all of you have seen it in high school or college, the kid that partied like crazy, all of a sudden something happens and he becomes Mr. Righteous, then he falls back into whatever and the cycle starts again. These are probably safe, of course they are not necessarily safe, they are sort of living life on the edge I suppose. The people I would worry for are those who believe they deserve love, and others do not.